A Trip Back Through BioShock's Fantastic Opening Level

If you played BioShock, you remember the opening level of the game. Who could forget it?
In a cool new video, ex-Irrational designer Bill Gardner sits down with IGN's Ryan McCaffrey to play through "Welcome to Rapture", the iconic opening level from the first BioShock. They chat while they play, hitting topics that range from the origins of the baby carriage revolver-splicer to the great internal debate over whether players should be able to use a wrench to break locks off doors.

If you're a BioShock nerd, it's a fun watch. I replayed the first five or so hours of this game little while back and was struck by just how much gusto it has, and what a showstopper of a performance it often was. Gardner describes their team as hungry, and nearly a decade since the game came out, that still shows: These people had something to prove, and they proved it.

Kinda what mypetmonkey touched on up there. It didn't "feel" right. And it just didn't seem fun at all.

It's hard to remember clearly, since it was a good while back now. I'd always been interested in the game since reading about it in Hyper or whatever, and it sounded really cool. Finally ended up with a 360 so I could actually give it a go, went to get stuck into it and it was just "nup, I can't play this".

Probably the last game that I was truly hyped for from its announcement and I wasn't disappointed when it came out. Amazing opening, atmosphere, location, set pieces. One of the few games I'd consider equal part art and part game but one that excels in both areas.

I both thoroughly enjoyed Bioshock and also ultimately disappointed by the time I reached the end. I was a big fan of System Shock and could see the influence. It definitely felt like a "lite" version, but I was alright with that. What left me disappointed was at the end of the game I was essentially a master at all trades. When I finished System Shock (more specifically, #2), I immediately started up the game again, building a Psi character to see how they played where before I was more into hacking. Bioshock had a little tool to do the hacking for me, could use all the weapons and had the best plasmids. There was no reason to replay.

I would have liked to have seen a mode where you couldn't use all plasmids, weapons and build turrets, just enough to focus on one or another. Maybe have all the weapons but if you had the best upgrades, you couldn't use the best plasmids and vice versa? Ditch the auto-hacking too. For me, Bioshock 2 did the opposite - it turned it even more into a linear shooter than #1.

Bioshock is still one of my favourite games, I just wanted more replay value.

Triple AAA games nailing the brief. Indie games surprising people out of nowhere, and expansions and patches that completely turn a game around. It's been a good year for games - now it's time for you to vote for your favourite.